I think this is a good idea, but it does overlap ever so slightly with Summarize This Topic. Once you are linking to the posts where the URL appeared, you start wondering:
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if this URL / video / image is great, isn’t the post it is in great too? Merely linking the two.. is that enough?
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maybe the “best” post should be part of the summary?
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maybe some excerpt of the best posts should appear in the topic summary?
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maybe we should “re-sort” the topic so the best posts are at the top..?
And then slip slip on down the slippery slope and we are in a world of pain.
Probably the best thing to do is just drive people towards “Summarize This Topic” if they want the TL;DR version of the topic instead of artificially pushing the best content into the topic summary.
Just to elaborate: the Popular Links section is meant to be like relevant footnotes to the topic, and shouldn’t be seen as more than that.